New Delhi: Buying newborns—boys for Rs 4.5 lakh and girls for Rs 3.5 lakh—from economically disadvantaged families, and then selling them to childless couples for hefty sums. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has uncovered a trafficking racket allegedly run by a Secunderabad-based doctor under the guise of surrogacy.
According to the agency, a network of agents was employed to convince expecting mothers to sell their newborns instead of opting for abortion. Additionally, the agency also found that birth certificates were fabricated to show final beneficiaries as the biological parents.
In its scrutiny of financial records of the eight hospitals either owned or controlled by Dr Athuluri Namratha alias Pachipalli Namratha, the ED found that she charged in the range of Rs 9-11 lakh per newborn around 2014-15 when the alleged racket first started operating.
The charges for a newborn eventually rose in the range of Rs 13-15 lakh in 2019 and 2020, and further jumped to Rs 20-30 lakh by 2024-25. The ED arrested Dr Namratha Thursday.
The agency’s money laundering probe stems from a series of FIRs filed by Hyderabad police following a complaint from a couple alleging that Namratha defrauded them in the name of surrogacy. The case led Hyderabad police to a trafficking racket allegedly operating on the pretext of surrogacy services. A total of 25 people were arrested, including Namratha, other doctors, lab technicians, supervisors, agents and beneficiary couples.
Sources in the ED said Namratha had allegedly been running the racket since 2014 and shifted its base to a branch of her hospital in Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam after the licence of her Secunderabad hospital was revoked.
“ED investigation further revealed that Dr Namratha used to pay around Rs 3.5 lakh for a female child and Rs 4.5 lakh for a male child. Such deliveries were conducted at her hospital in Visakhapatnam because the authorities revoked the license of her Secunderabad hospital,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement Friday. “Further, the birth reports forwarded to the municipal authorities were forged by her and reflected the names of the childless couples as parents instead of the biological parents,” the spokesperson added.
According to the findings of the probe, a report on which was submitted by the agency to a Special PMLA Court in Hyderabad Friday, Namratha allegedly promised childless couples babies through a surrogacy process that included an entire medical package, covering medication, collection of the specimen and the follow-up process.
Web of agents
According to the findings of the probe, a report on which was submitted by the agency to a Special PMLA Court in Hyderabad Friday, Namratha allegedly promised childless couples babies through a surrogacy process that included an entire medical package, covering medication, collection of the specimen and the follow-up process.
Based on her promises, the couples would provide biological samples and pay fees ranging between Rs 20-40 lakh for having biological children through surrogacy.
However, the agency found that in reality, no surrogacy was performed, and instead, newborns were trafficked through a network of agents.
These agents, the agency submitted, used to bring poor, and economically downtrodden women and families who wanted to abort their unborn children due to financial constraints into the scheme of things devised allegedly by Dr Namratha.
As part of the conspiracy, they were then convinced to continue the pregnancy and sell their newborns.
“The deliveries of pregnant women were arranged at Dr. Pachipalla Namratha’s Visakhapatnam hospital without charging money from the pregnant women and their families. The timing of the delivery was matched with the assurance given to the childless couples, and, if needed a medication was administered for inducing labour and advancing the delivery,” the agency told the court.
The complaint that set the probe in motion, and led to a money-laundering probe, allegedly involving Rs 32 lakh, the money the couple claimed to have paid in 15 tranches between August 2024 and June 2025.
The agency has claimed to have established a money trail between the victims to Dr Namratha and further flow of a portion of those funds to her agents, sub-agents and their families.
This is an updated version of the report
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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